27 June 2019
The European Patent Office (EPO) has set out an ambitious vision to excel in its role as one of the world’s foremost intellectual property offices.
The EPO’s Strategic Plan (SP2023), unanimously adopted yesterday by its Administrative Council, focuses on achieving five goals that will ensure the EPO is capable of delivering excellence to all its stakeholders: staff engagement, IT modernisation, quality, the European patent network and sustainability. It also highlights key initiatives within each area and projects that will be rolled out over the next four years, with some extending beyond the scope of the current plan.
"This Strategic Plan is a clear vision of how we want our Office to look in the future, and how we plan to achieve it," said EPO President António Campinos. "What we have now is a roadmap for achieving a more sustainable patent office for Europe, better equipped to succeed in an evolving IP landscape. We intend to be a more adaptable and agile organisation that can support inventors everywhere with improved and more responsive services. This may be ambitious, but with the commitment and expertise of our staff, we also believe that it is achievable."
SP2023 will help the Office to rise to complex new challenges, including an increasingly networked and globalised world economy, the emergence of new patent system players, evolving stakeholder expectations and rapid technological change.
The Strategic Plan identifies five main areas:
SP2023 was developed in two rounds of consultation with the 38 EPO member states, patent system users, the public, IP offices and EPO staff.